This Entrepreneur Couldn't Sleep Because of Back Pain — So He Built a Six-Figure Smart Bed
Bob Duncan spent nearly a decade developing Ciridian, a luxury bed with individually-controlled smart springs for real-time pressure relief.
If price were no object, and I were trying to design the coolest, most pressure-relieving bed, how would I go about it?
After years of struggling with back pain, entrepreneur Bob Duncan decided to find out.
Duncan, who is the founder and chairman of American Leather (now Artisant Lane), began the project in 2018 as a personal pursuit. It’s since evolved into a full-fledged business built around what’s billed as “the world’s most sophisticated smart bed.”
That bed is Ciridian, which is a portmanteau of circadian (rhythm) and cirrus (cloud). It’s a king-sized smart bed that delivers pressure relief via 400 independently-controlled springs that respond to a sleeper’s weight and movements.
With a starting retail price of $125,000, Ciridian sits well above the premium pricing of popular smart sleep rivals such as Eight Sleep, Bryte, and Sleep Number. However, each bed is made to order with customizable bases and swappable comfort layers. It also comes with complimentary annual tune-ups from a Ciridian technician.
Ciridian has only been on the market for a few months, so Duncan is eager to spread the word to those who have nightly back pain, as he once did. “My motivation was from a pain standpoint, and I really do believe and hope that we’ll be able to help people with that,” he says.
I spoke with Duncan about his motivation to build a smart bed, how his furniture industry background prepared him to create his dream product, and his vision for the future of the company in a world that’s starting to care more about sleep.
Today’s post is sponsored by Midnight Brief Media & Consulting.